Since I've Been Loving You
by emsana
Summary: Spoilers for 5x04. Cas is human and when a blast from the past walks into the room he knows immediately. Dean/Cas. Partner to Nobody's Fault But Mine.


Author Note: I don't own Supernatural, and even if I did I wouldn't do half as good a job. Title from Led Zeppelin.

**Since I've Been Loving You**

You get into trouble on one of the runs. You don't really remember how it happened and, to be perfectly frank, you don't care to. When you come to Chuck is leaning over you muttering something about consciousness and blood loss and all that other mortality stuff you've had to become accustomed to but still struggle to care about at right this second. All you want to do right now is sink back into that abyss of nothingness you've been residing in for... oh, who cares. Unfortunately your fearless leader has something else to say about that because next thing you know he's grabbed the front of your shirt and is shaking you.

"Don't _ever_ do that to me again."

You wouldn't have the time to respond to his quiet rage if you wanted to because he's hurricaning back out ("Where are you going?" "To kill something.") and you're slipping back into your comfortable oblivion.

-

When you wake up you can feel a perfect bruise growing across the side of your head, down your jaw, and slowly congealing blood trickling down your leg. Ow. You wonder if maybe you were hit by an anvil, a tonne of bricks, and wish Dean wasn't so pissed at you right now because he'd probably laugh at that and give you a look that makes you forget the world is ending (ended) for finally picking up on some normal references. Instead you just try and sit up and wince to yourself, but it's not just because your insides are clawing to get outside. Dean.

"How are you feeling?"

You shrug and start to pull on a clean (well, cleanish) shirt that has been left out for you. You come to regret both these actions within seconds. Dean is sitting on a table across from you, back against the wall.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't," You nod and try not to think too much. "You ever scare me like that again then, I swear, I'll..."

But there's nothing he can really say. There are no such thing as threats any more, not vocal ones anyway. And even 'I'll kill you myself' doesn't carry any weight any more. You're all dead anyway.

-

When "Past Dean" walks into the room you know immediately. You aren't hooked up to Heaven any longer but you don't have to be an angel to tell that he isn't the man you're been sleeping with for the last year or so. You make a snap-shot decision; you have seen "Now Dean" go through enough (Enough.) and if you're right about this and this is Dean but not quite yet Dean then the last thing he wants to cope with on top of everything else is the "relationship" you and the man he will come to be are in. Anyway, it's not really lying; the girls _are_ beautiful (just not your type of beautiful) and they are going to have an "orgy" (it took you months to get your head, however human, round that word); you just won't be joining them. It always works the same way: you throw in a few words and the odd bottle of tequila and then you go and find Dean. Oh fragment you have become.

"Are you stoned?"

"Generally." For a minute you think he might have caught the sadness in your voice. But your past has bigger problems at hand.

-

You think he might pick up on it again when you're all meeting up around the Colt. The way you can't look at either of them when you explain how Dean knows where Lucifer (Lucifer, not Sam, because Sam's gone too) is, the way you say "I'm afraid" and you don't just mean it allegorically.

"Oh, so we're torturing again." Now Dean, your Dean, doesn't like the way the former self to which he is a shadow keeps referring to them in that way; 'we'. It's not hard to see why. There's a reason why he's always in Jane's cabin when he's meant to be in Reesa's and vice versa, and it isn't just about you. Your Dean is not Dean any more. And it's killing you (faster than the Apocalypse) to see it.

"I like past you." Oh, cruel irony. Because it is so starkly and painfully true. You like Past Dean, whose only worry was his brother, and evading Michael, and preventing the Apocalypse (yes, _only_ that). But, then again, you may have liked him then, but you sure as anything love him now so you guess you'll take what you can get.

-

"Are you coming?"

"Of course." Where else are you going to be if not by his side? You started to realise long ago that where Dean goes you go, if not physically then mentally. The day Dean dies you can only pray to an empty Heaven that you go down with him.

"But why is he? I mean, he's you five years ago if something happens to him you're gone right?"

"He's coming."

"Okay." But it isn't, it really isn't. Because if there's one thing worse than losing Dean now then it's never having had him this far.

-

When Dean takes the bottle from you in the car you do what you've started to find naturally around him (well, this version of him anyway) and you shrug it off. You think your Dean knows why you take them, why you've started drinking, but you don't want him to know in advance. You wish you could say it out loud but you have more chinks in your armour then you ever imagined so you don't. It _hurts_. And it's everything; being human, not being not human, the end of days, the way Dean is dying faster than the rest of you and there is nothing (Nothing.) you can do to stop it. So why not drown your sorrows while they're still just sorrows and you still have the strength to drown them.

He asks and you laugh, because it's better than crying and as you explain you start to realise how very like Dean (Past Dean anyway) you have become; deflecting everything with humour and lies. Like girls and decadency – it's such an easy one to slip off the tongue and you think maybe that will put the man you don't love yet at peace. But the way he looks at you almost makes you wish it were true, because if he seems this thrown, this ready to abandon what little hope you know he's nearly ready to lose, by that then he would probably rather curl up and die than accept the truth. So you try not to look at him and just keep lying, because you may not be burying yourself in girls but it probably still counts as decadency, and some days being with Dean leaves more open wounds than healing scars.

-

"They'll never see us coming." And it hits you. This is the last time you will ever see Dean; past, present, or otherwise. (And you're not so sure that future is an option that hasn't left with your brothers.) It probably shows in your face; the conflict, but you trust Dean with your life, and your old life, and everything else in between. You just hope he can be trusted with his own.

- - -

"We had an appointment." Dean has never looked at you this way before and you know the past can change people so you wonder about the future. Part of you wants to know what lies in wait for humanity, for Dean, for you. But the way he looks at you, so pleased to see you in the here and now, drives that thought from your mind instantly.

"Don't ever change."

And that one line, the way he doesn't lose your gaze for a second, how he grips your shoulder lightly but it still feels like he's clinging on for dear life (both yours and his own) grasps you like a vice. You promise yourself, come Hell or... Hell, you will do everything left within your slowly fading power to stay the same.


End file.
